To nurture a nature
You said you’re Egyptian, right?
Yes! Well… Egyptian and Palestinian.
This is so embarrassing to admit but I had a whole Ancient Egypt phase as a child.
You did?
Yeah. I was, like, obsessed. I begged my parents to take me to Cairo.
That’s just adorable.
It was all I thought about. I wanted to be an Egyptologist.
You know what’s funny? That never even occurred to me as an option.
Really?
Yes. I remember being unimpressed with the pyramids as a child and wondering about when we would be home and I’d get to eat a mango gelato.
That’s funny to imagine. You as a child, bored with one of the wonders of the world.
I loved it when I went back as an adult but it was hard to be patriotic when I was younger. People would hear me talk and call me a khawaga. That’s kind of like being called a gringa. Imagine that: Me, a gringa!
How mean!
It hurt to hear but I get it now. They were just trying to make sense of me.
Do they still call you a gringa?
I went to get my ID renewed recently and a man asked me if I was from Beirut as he was holding proof of citizenship. So, I’m not being called a gringa but I also kind of am.
Beirut? Isn’t that in Lebanon?
It is. Not too far from Gaza, to be fair. Levantine dialects can be easy to mix up.
How are they, by the way? Your Gazan relatives.
Most of them are in Cairo now. My mother’s uncle died recently.
I’m so sorry to hear that.
It’s okay. It was diabetes, not the IDF.